Going Deep with The Nats

The 26,719 paid attendance was even larger at Nationals Park for James Wood‘s debut because every player/coach in the Nats’ dugout was a fan last night. Wood’s teammates and coaches all joined in the cheering and ovations as Wood got his first hit in his first career at-bat and danced at 1st base. The storybook ending didn’t finish with Wood scoring the winning run. Instead, it was a heartbreaking L.

When James Wood joins the Washington Nationals roster on Monday, he will be the third permanent piece of the quintet to make the big league team from the Juan Soto/Josh Bell trade. To be technical, we could include Luke Voit who was the veteran throw-in, and was quickly gone after just 53 games, as the sixth player that came over to the Nats.

The photo above, in one frame, shows Wood batting, MacKenzie Gore pitching, and CJ Abrams at shortstop as 60 percent of the five player haul of youngsters who are up in the Major Leagues on Monday. Note, that is Robert Hassell III who is taking a lead off of second base in that photo, and he is the fourth piece of that blockbuster trade with Single-A flamethrower, Jarlin Susana (not pictured), as the fifth piece. That is quite the quintet.

There seems to be a reoccurring script to these Washington Nationals games with the same dark comedy. The elements are: 1. The other team takes the lead 2. Bad base running 3. Bad defense 4. One pitch at-bats 5. Bad umpiring leads to a run 7. Lack of hustle 8. Bad luck 9. Nats lose

That script just repeats on a loop to a point of disbelief that this just happens over and over. Sometimes it is the same actor playing the same part which makes this even worse. Some fans are convinced the umpires are out to get the Nationals.

As soon as the Washington Nationals jet flew out of San Diego at 6:45 pm PDT, they turned the page on a miserable series. That series exposed a team that makes too many mistakes. Where is the internal improvement? What you do next is what counts. You must improve your product. No, it was not a happy flight after being swept by the Padres. The Nationals had leads in two of the three games in the series including a 3-run lead in the 10th inning on Monday.

If you had flashbacks to May 16 of last year in Miami, we get it. There are often parallels to other times, and Hunter Harvey had that same moment in both games with Luis Arraez coming up with two outs. This time his manager, Dave Martinez, made the right decision for Harvey and 4-fingered Arraez to take first base. Instead of Jorge Soler stepping into the batter’s box next — it was Jurickson Profar on Monday. Like with Soler, Harvey had him at 2-strikes with 2-outs, and then threw the fateful pitch. But here’s the thing, it’s what happened both times before Arraez stepped to the plate that cost Harvey and his team. The Nats got swept in that Miami series in 2023 after entering that series with an 8-5 record in the previous two weeks.